An Update on SWC Negotiations

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

As we approach the one-year mark in negotiations with the Student Workers of Columbia union (SWC) for a successor contract, it is time to step back and reflect on where we stand. 

As most will know, bargaining has been fraught, and we remain far apart on virtually all issues. Only nine bargaining sessions have taken place. The union made no successor contract proposals until October, and it hastily transmitted its last 18 proposals, without discussion, in the final minutes of the seventh session on February 27, to enable the strike authorization vote the union already had opened. With that vote in hand, at the most recent bargaining session the union read through the remaining 12 of those 18 proposals in quick succession, without allowing discussion or answering University questions. As the update from that session notes, most of these proposals would impinge on faculty decision-making on academic matters or erode University control over operations. Most also address non-employment subjects outside of compensation, benefits, and conditions of employment – the only areas that federal labor law requires parties to negotiate in a labor contract. 

For a sense of the details of SWC’s demands in successor contract bargaining to date, some illustrative examples can be found here.

The first contract between the University and SWC was hammered out over nearly three years and was a landmark contract for unionized student employees. A first contract represents a durable structure that ensures both fair terms for employees and the continued successful operation of the employer’s business. It establishes a universe of subjects that both sides see as critical to their relationship. SWC membership voted overwhelmingly to approve its first contract in 2022. In this sense, the initial contract represents a negotiated consensus between the union and the University about what that fundamental structure of our relationship should look like. It was also consistent with the law and norms governing labor relations as well as the Framework Agreement between the parties, which, as previously explained , set critical boundaries between bargainable employment matters and academic and operational matters that the parties agreed would be out-of-bounds.

While contract renewal allows the details of these arrangements to change, importantly, successor contracts typically respect the fundamental structures agreed upon when the relationship between employer and union was first formalized. In our case, the centerpiece of that relationship is the Framework Agreement, on the strength of which the University agreed not to pursue litigation and to recognize the union voluntarily. In a healthy and successful union/management relationship, reliable structures like the Framework Agreement and a ratified first contract create stability and build benefits for both sides over time. Yet most of SWC’s current proposals seek to rewrite the first contract in fundamental ways. 

SWC has doubled down on its position that the Framework Agreement no longer applies and that anything the union may decide to propose, on any subject, must be possible to negotiate and include in the successor contract. For that reason, the University has been compelled to respond by filing another Unfair Labor Practice charge (ULP) with the National Labor Relations Board in an effort to hold the union to its agreement. You can read the full charge here.  

SWC’s effort to significantly change rather than adjust the initial contract and, more fundamentally, to abandon the Framework Agreement suggests a troubling future: that each successive new group of SWC leaders will seek to have their own “first contract” vision, every few years, attempting to undermine the academic/employment distinction and making the effort, disruption, and instability of extended contract negotiations – possibly including moves to strike – a regular and recurring feature of the University’s life. 

Last summer, before the expiration of the first contract, the University presented a strong and comprehensive economic package with which the union refused to engage. More than nine months later, we are not closer to an agreement. And yet, we could deliver meaningful improvements to all student employees in time for this coming summer if SWC decided to join us in renewed bargaining that respected the Framework Agreement and the basic parameters of the first contract. 

It is time for SWC’s leadership to join the University in a serious attempt to mend what has been to this point an unproductive process. Within a short period of time we could have a strong successor contract that would materially benefit every student employee at Columbia – but only with good will and good faith on both sides, with a focus on genuine employment matters, and perhaps with mediation as the University has suggested since last summer.

There are lines that the first contract did not cross and that the University will not cross now – the line separating academic and operational prerogatives from employment-related decision-making being the most important. But there is still much else to discuss. We must engage in meaningful bargaining to arrive at a strong and competitive successor contract that will help support and attract the best graduate students so that we may collectively fulfill the University’s commitments to research, education, and the training of a new generation of scholars.

We hope that SWC will be a willing partner in moving this process forward.

Sincerely,
Amy Hungerford
Dean and Executive Vice President, Faculty of Arts and Sciences